Hachiko

Just watched this 2009 movie starring (not really) Richard Gere. It’s about the oldest bonding in human history, something that long pre-dates civilization. I hope it endures if civilization vanishes for a while.

I must confess at the outset that I am an inveterate animal lover – well, all large intelligent animals anyway – and given another chance in life I might well have made a career of living with them, the way Jim Corbett, James Herriot, Gerald Durrell and Konrad Lorenz did. Dolphins, elephants, chimps, horses would have all been fine, but dogs especially so: I am slightly crazy about dogs, I think. That might go some way to explain why I found this movie so heart-warming.

I had known about a lot of real and legendary faithful dogs, but somehow not about Hachiko (look up this wikipedia article: that will save me a lot of labour). Although the story has been transplanted to the US – and I found no good explanation for how the puppy turned up there from halfway across the world – it has been educational for me, too, therefore. Many thanks to young River Ghosh for bringing it to me. You can look up this link to find out a little more about the movie, and the comments at this webpage, I think, can only tell you how widely different human beings are.

As I said, the dog is both the real star and show-stealer. I wonder what directors have to do to make children and animals act like that…

I found it good to see that the audience reaction was on the whole very positive, and to learn that in Japan the memory of the (real) dog is still revered, three generations after it died. And it made me ashamed once more to be an Indian, thinking about how animals are treated in this country as a rule.

If you watch the movie, tell me how you liked it.